“Scratch-off” or “instant-win” lottery tickets have enjoyed immense popularity in the lottery industry for decades. These games offer distinct advantages to the lottery authorities and are attractive to a broad spectrum of players. Typically, the tickets are printed in the primary language of a targeted population base. For example, the same themed ticket may be printed in different runs in English, Spanish, German, and so forth, depending on the intended country or other distribution locale.
However, as the population base grows more culturally diverse, particularly in larger metropolitan areas, one single language may no longer be dominant over a broad population spectrum. Entire sections or neighborhoods of a city or other locale may speak one language, while an adjacent neighborhood may primarily speak an entirely different language. The residents of these neighborhoods may not be comfortable with the other respective language. This pertains to play of lottery tickets in differing languages as well. Persons who are not fluent or comfortable with the language of the scratch-off (“instant”) lottery ticket may avoid playing the game for fear of not understanding the game rules or, even worse, not recognizing that their ticket may actually be a winning ticket. As the games continue to add greater prizes and more complex entertainment features, the reluctance to play the game by those not comfortable with the language of the ticket will correspondingly grow.
In the past, it has not been economically or commercially feasible to provide a multi-lingual game card or lottery ticket. The available surface area on a scratch-off ticket (often referred to as the ticket “real estate”) for the various game features, such as a game play area, instructions, security features, graphics, and so forth, is limited and cannot reasonably accommodate repetition of the pertinent game rules or instructions in different languages. Essentially, the only option was to provide separate production runs of tickets in the different languages.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,434,792 proposes a solution wherein a game on a single paper game card includes a game play area, and a first set of game instructions provided on the game card printed in a first language. A second set of the game instructions in a second different printed language is superimposed over the first set of game instructions. An indicator is provided on the game card to convey that the first set of game instructions are present and accessible by removing the second set of game instructions. Thus, the player has the option to read the game instructions in either or both of the first or second printed languages. Although this is a useful method and system, it requires substantial additional printing time, expenses, and materials.
The industry and public would benefit from still more improved methods to facilitate multi-lingual play of a game on a printed game card, such as a scratch-off lottery ticket.